UConn and Stanford Women To Play for NCAA Championship

The final is set. Tomorrow night UConn Huskies and the Stanford Cardinals will be facing off tomorrow night in San Antonio, Texas for the NCAA Women’s Basketball title game.

The final four scores don’t actually tell the stories of the games. Stanford beat Oklahoma 73 – 66 but the game wasn’t even close until the final two minutes. Oklahoma never had the lead even once during this game, and most of the time Stanford was ahead by more than 10 points. Oklahoma just couldn’t stop Nnemkadi Ogwumike. She scored 38 points during the semi-final. Thirty-eight points! That makes her the woman that has scored the second most points in an NCAA Final Four game. The only woman who outscored Ogwumike in a late round tournament game was Sheryl Swoope. Swoopes scored 47 points in the National Championship game in 1993.

The final score of the other semi-final was UConn 70 – Baylor 50. While Baylor never actually had the lead, the game was very close for a good deal of the second half. Baylor came out of halftime on fire, the Lady Bears scored 12 unanswered points right out of the locker room.

This game was nothing like I expected. Yes, I knew Baylor was good. But good enough to hang with Connecticut? To be within 4 points early in the second half? I never would have predicted that.

The first ten minutes of the second half of this game was intense, then everything fell apart for Baylor. The UConn dominance we’ve been seeing all year was back. Maya Moore (who, by the way, has a 3.7 grade point average and is considering applying for a Rhodes scholarship in 2011) could not be stopped. Moore had 12 rebounds and 34 points in the game (she had 21 points in the first half. The entire Baylor team had 26 first half points.) moving her ahead of Rebecca Lobo and Kara Wolters into fifth place on the UConn all-time scoring list with a current total of 2,145 points. Tina Charles also had a monster game with 13 rebounds, 4 assists and 21 points – and that was matched up against 6? 8? Brittney Griner.

Brittney Griner set a tournament record herself. She had 35 block in the series.

Now The University of Connecticut will face Stanford. Stanford has won 27 games in a row. Their only loss all year wasback in December – to UConn.